Deacons: Marginal or Central?

Author(s): John N. Collins

Source: The Furrow , Jun., 2008, Vol. 59, No. 6 (Jun., 2008), pp. 323-330
Published by: The Furrow

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27665758

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Deacons - Marginal or Central?

John N. Collins

Online at the local deacons' forum in Melbourne yesterday I was

interested to encounter the April publication of the Archdiocese of
Dublin providing information about deacons and how to become
one. I thought that by today the local deacons may have been talk
ing about it. All was silence. This surprised me because towards
the end of 2007 a similar initiative had been launched in
Melbourne., and considerable chat started up. This got me think
ing further until at the end of the day I had a chance to put some
ideas in writing.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

As publications, the Dublin booklet of more than 3,000 words
wins hands down over the Melbourne coloured brochure of one
fold-out A4 page with strong headings, brief paragraphs, and
some photographs. I casually attributed the difference to economy
of size - Dublin's Catholics versus the Melbourne melting pot of
races and creeds. Then I was curious and checked some statistics
on catholic.hierarchy.org . Considerations about deacons in rela
tion to size would actually seem to give Melbourne a prior call on
deacons.
While both archdioceses count about 1.1 million members, the
Catholics per priest ratio in Melbourne is 1/1700, whereas Dublin
enjoys figures of 1/760. On top of this, Melbourne's 1.1 million
still hold memories of being once something of a ghetto commu
nity, but now it's hard to pick a Catholic as they live among some
3.5 million of 'other or no religious persuasion'. Their minority
status compares with the numerical superiority of Dublin's 1.1
million Roman Catholics over some 200,000 people of 'other or
no religious persuasion'. (Some might suggest that these days the
latter sociological tag, let's call it 'the OONRP factor', might be
better applied to a proportion of the 1.1 million. But where do you
start, at the bottom echelon or at the top?)
One of the big talking points about deacons in the context of

John N. Collins lives at 21 Kananook Avenue, Seaford, Vic. 3198,

Australia

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THE FURROW

the current state of the Church in first world countries is whether

deacons should be seen as a back-up to the increasing shortage of
priests. Deacons, pastoral leaders and theologians are virtually
unanimous and equally vociferous about this. They answer, No.
In fact the National Directory and Norms for Ireland in respect
of deacons plainly states (n. 5): 'Permanent deacons are not "sub
stitute priests", nor are they intended to take the place of religious,
or of lay ministers.'
One can imagine how this policy might sit conveniently in
Dublin, but Melbourne presents a different picture. Adding to the
1/1700 ratio of priest to parishioners is the increased median age
of priests, and within 10 years Melbourne is going to need as
many deacons and lay ecclesial ministers it can lay its hands on
(oops, let's say, as many as it can encourage to join more fully in
the Church's mission). To the simple age factor, add the increas
ing stress upon the ageing priests as so many are asked to head up
amalgamated parishes at the very time in their lives when they
need and deserve greener pastures.
Four years ago precisely I attended the funeral of a 71 -year old
pastor of amalgamated parishes. Yes, this highly respected priest
took seriously ill on the Monday after the weekend round of duties
in his two parishes. His eulogist was 76 years of age, he berated
the ecclesiastical authorities for enforcing such labours on elderly
men, and yet he remains himself an active pastor in a major parish
to this day.
Four weeks ago I attended the funeral of the second previous
archbishop of Melbourne. The grey-haired clerics processing into
such functions - some bowed, some almost stumbling to keep up,
a scattering of middle-aged men, a handful of younger South-East
Asian or Indian faces - is an astonishing sight. One's instinct is to
pray for them. Another is to wish them a more restful conclusion
to their working days. One can also almost hear an inner voice
saying, 'Don't scream.' As the clergy processed into the funeral of
the priest just mentioned, a voice behind me did whisper, 'Is this
a dream?' to which a whisper replied, 'It's a nightmare.'
When the night is over and we enter the new day of a much
reduced body of priests - in Melbourne, if not yet in Dublin - will
deacons be adequate, especially if they continue to profess that
they are not substitutes for priests?

SUBSTITUTE PRIESTS
In fact, if we glance back to the origins of the permanent dia
conate at the Second Vatican Council, we see that historically a
foreseen shortage of priests in the post-WWII years was precisely
one of the motivations for seeking to have deacons restored to the

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 DEACONS - MARGINAL OR CENTRAL?

Church. The Irish National Directory itself registers this when it

records the three reasons behind the Council's decision to restore
the permanent diaconate. 15.3, citing the Vatican's own Basic
Norms and Directory for permanent deacons (1998), presents the
third reason as 'a concern to provide regions where there was a
shortage of clergy, with sacred ministers.'
I am not sure whether those responsible for implementing dia
conal programmes would share my view here, which is that on top
of the problem of educating deacons up to the emerging realities,
they will have to embrace the other more daunting task of educat
ing the non-ordained into retaining a sense that they are still
Church. In other words, given a failing supply of priests, non
ordained members will have to learn what it is to live in non
eucharistic communities and yet retain shared lively connections
with the person and teachings of Jesus.
Currently, arguably the best equipped group for assuming lead
ership in these communities is the deacons. At least they have a
sense of a common calling, they are theologically educated, pas
torally trained, and experienced in liturgy and preaching.
However, they number across the globe a mere 34,000, and these
are most unevenly spread: 17,000 in the United States, a minute
400 odd in the whole of Africa. Priests number over 400,000.
Clearly, deacons cannot be the answer everywhere. And yet it
seems that most of them will need to be prepared to assume roles
of leadership.
In any such role, however, they will have to remain as deacons
and not as presbyters. This may require considerable re-position
ing of themselves. Inevitably the situation will invite close collab
oration with already existing and rapidly developing cohorts of
lay ecclesial ministers. Of course wherever deacons are already
pastorally involved at parish level they will have experience of
such collaboration. But in the newer emerging situations they
would appear to have to assume leadership as distinct from their
present status as fellow members of a pastoral team.
Since the vast majority of lay ecclesial ministers in the first
world are women, very many of whom are ambivalent about the
exclusively male diaconate - and often hostile to it, the experience
of collaboration and leadership is not likely to be without tensions
and problems. Perhaps most of the women are in fact more prac
tised in the pastoral dimension, often having been engaged within
it on a full or near-full time basis. Many also have specific quali
fications in the pastoral area, and are also more highly skilled in
both administrative operations and interpersonal transactions than
are the deacons. The deacons, after all, are mainly (to date) fully
employed in non-ecclesial careers; they dedicate what objectively
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THE FURROW

could be called token hours to a preferred pastoral commitment -

that is, one within a discerned competence - and mostly give the
clearest expression to their diaconate through involvement in
liturgy and in preaching.
In such circumstances, the deacons' non-ordained female col
leagues and many pew Catholics could well recognise something
dysfunctional in attempts to establish deacon-led communities. Of
course, a quick solution could be to lobby the Vatican for women
deacons - and there is no theological obstacle to such a move, as
the 2002 report on the diaconate by the International Theological
Commission made clear in the final paragraph of its extensive and
protracted (10-year) enquiry.
To my knowledge, no Bishops' Conference has ventured this
lobbying tactic, although some individual bishops have occasion
ally publicly voiced their support of women deacons. On glancing
down the list of contents of the Irish Directory I was momentarily
led to think that the Irish bishops had breached the protocol of
silence in such matters. Section G was headed 'The Link between
the Conferral of Ministries and Ordination as a Deacon', and the
phrasing of this heading brought to mind the situation in the
United States where lay ecclesial ministers may enjoy a formal
induction by way of a 'Liturgy for the conferral of an office' (Co
Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord, USCCB 2005, p. 59). It thus
seemed that Section G was about to address relationships in the
field between such ministers and deacons. Alas, Section G was
addressing the prior requirement of a candidate for diaconate to
receive a 'Conferral of Ministries' named Acolyte and Lector.
What these reflections on the diaconate as envisaged by the
new Directory so far suggest is a certain confusion about just
where the future deacons might fit in, especially as we anticipate
conditions for the pursuing of pastoral objectives changing sub
stantially.

THE PACKAGE DEAL

I return to the Dublin booklet inviting men to consider the dia
conate, I Have Given You an Example: The Permanent Diaconate
in the Archdiocese of Dublin. Not only is the booklet handsome in
its simple way - even in PDF mode - but it is silkily written.
Clear, easy to read, giving a sense all the time of moving from a
beginning to an end. From a literary point of view it is almost
impeccable: just that at the very end an assurance is offered to the
'aspiriant' that he will not be alone on his journey to discernment.
In spite of this assurance, the aspirant may feel disconcerted
once he goes on to read that his journey requires entry to a
'propaedeutic' period (and may well wonder how on earth he is
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 DEACONS - MARGINAL OR CENTRAL?

going to pronounce that word when he gets called in for a chat

about his application). However, this is a one-off situation. After
the first aspirants get over that hurdle, as they will, the word will
be demystified and all future propaedeuticians will wear the word
as a badge of honour.
This stands out, nonetheless, as a telltale bit of jargon exempli
fying one of the characteristics of the booklet. It is a package. The
framework and language and theological nodules and scriptural
allusions echo what various bishops' national conferences and
Vatican dicasteries themselves have all been seamlessly expound
ing. And we must acknowledge that, in their respective Gaelic
wisdoms, both Dublin and Melbourne are late upon the scene in
gearing themselves up into this syndrome. After all, it is nearly 40
years since the United States bishops initiated their home-grown
programme (and after only its partial implementation they have
already ordained, as we have noted, 17,000 deacons). But here
now are the Irish pushing all the right buttons.
Not everyone buys the package, however. Before the Second
Vatican Council, during the Council, and in all the decades since
the Council, much probing, questioning, differentiation, and
debate was going on in reference to the diaconate. An agreed and
definitive profile is lacking to this day. At the traditional Lenten
meeting of 2008 between the clergy of Rome and their bishop, a
Roman deacon asked Pope Benedict XVI 'to indicate a pastoral
initiative that could become a sign of a more incisive presence of
the permanent diaconate in the city of Rome'. After some gener
alities, Pope Benedict concluded, 'you have asked me a question
that, I must say, goes a bit beyond my strengths: what would be
the tasks proper to the deacons of Rome' (ZENIT 08021105).

UNFINISHED BUSINESS
During the last two years, to the east across the Celtic Sea, almost
every issue of the bi-monthly journal, The Pastoral Review has
carried a contribution to an unresolved debate about the specific
character and consequent role of the deacon. Over recent months
heightened tensions have become apparent.
The situation began innocently enough with an evocative arti
cle on 'The Deacon: An Icon of Christ the Servant' by the bishop
of East Anglia (July 2006). Since then his cause has been joined
on several occasions by the bishop of Lancaster and a leading dea
con of his team, all three invoking the big-sell items of the pack
age. Jesus said, 'The Son of Man has come not to be served but
to serve ...' (Mark 10:45); he said, T am among you as one
who serves ...' (Luke 22:27); he washed the feet of the disciples
(John 13); Luke reports that seven Greek men were ordained dea

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THE FURROW

cons to attend to neglected widows of their ethnic group (Acts

6:1-6).
This servant mode of Jesus and of the early Church is presented
as reflecting the early major Christian conceptualisation of Jesus
as the Isaian Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53). To this is added the
heavenly figure hymned in Paul's praise of the Christ who 'emp
tied himself, taking the form of a slave' (Philippians 2:7).
However, parallel with these over-exposed and inexpertly
manipulated views of the deacon as the icon of Christ the servant,
the London journal has also been publishing half a dozen views
contesting the viability of this servant theme in regard to the dia
conate. In our contributions to the debate, Anthony Gooley, a
Brisbane deacon, and myself have challenged the biblical iconol
ogy presented in this fashion and widely represented in national
and diocesan directories for deacons in the English-speaking
churches, and indeed beyond.

REFOCUSING ON THE SERVANT

This debate across the sea is unresolved and ongoing. The views
of one side of the debate make up the substance of the identity of
the deacon in the Dublin booklet, / Have Given You an Example.
The narrowness of the view represented here and across affiliated
statements in the Irish and similar directories is highlighted by the
different views in evidence once one goes further east across the
English Channel into central Europe.
The French and German diaconates have never been comfort
able with the package put together initially in the United States
and then almost inevitably subsumed into the thinking of national
bodies of bishops in other English-speaking areas. The German
Roman Catholic deacons in particular are very conscious - and
rightly so - of their history of having been stimulators of a mod
ern diaconal element in the Church. And yet their view of where
the deacon sits in the parish and diocese is rather different from
that in the Dublin booklet.
Briefly, as the Germans (and their Northern and Central
European colleagues) of the International Diaconate Centre made
plain at the Bressanone conference of 1997 on 'Deacon - Priest
substitute?', their view of the deacon is primarily of a deacon of
the margins, that is, a deacon working beyond the confines (both
ideological and geographical) of the parish. This broad pastoral
strategy received considerable support from an eminent patron
during his tenure as bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Walter
Kasper, as is evident in what has become itself a modern iconic
profile of today's deacon in his book Leadership in the Church
(pp. 13-44). His profile is different from the bland sketches in
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 DEACONS - MARGINAL OR CENTRAL?

documents like / Have Given You an Example and its matrix

Directory and Norms.
The dissonance does not end there. As the debate in The
Pastoral Review has been illustrating, only rarely is one particular
premise looked at in circles of diaconal administration and theol
ogy. That premise resides partly in the observation that the his
toric Church has carried the title 'deacon' with care, maintaining
its prestige in all circumstances across the centuries.
The significance attaching to this care with which the title
'deacon' has been maintained is considerable. As is easy to dis
cern, the term 'deacon' - like the other European terms for this
functionary (diaconus, Diakon, di?cono, etc.) - derives from the
ancient Greek word diakonos. This word and other diakon- words
occur a hundred times in the New Testament, and in almost all
cases translations present us with terms like 'servant' or 'minis
ter' . In two passages (Philippians 1:2 and 1 Timothy 3:8-13), how
ever, translators have almost invariably presented us with the term
'deacons'. This consistency reflects a profound conviction that the
Church contains a particular set of sacred officers for whom
diakonos/'deacon' is a title. It also reflects a determination on the
part of the Church to display in its terminology a singular con
nection across the ages between this ministry and its origins in the
early Church.

TWO PHASES
Such a situation has invited two main phases of modern linguistic
investigation into the terminology. One was in the 1930s, with
results pointing to Jesus as an iconic servant. This view remains
represented in Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament (vol. 2, diakon- words by H. W. Beyer), and its theo
logical implications have been playing out in much of the Second
Vatican Council and in most of the writings on ministry since
then.
The second phase began only in 1990 with the publication of
Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources. By 2000 the out
comes of this linguistic, semantic and exegetical study were incor
porated in the 3rd English language edition of the Walter Bauer
Greek-English Lexicon of New Testament and Other Early
Christian Literature edited by Frederick William Danker.
In the course of this second phase, numerous individual the
ologians have been turning a critical eye on the outcomes of the
first phase. The earliest of these was in fact Joseph Ratzinger in
his critique of the dominant low theology of ministry based on an
interpretation of diakon- words as 'a profane vocabulary' ('On the
Essence of the Priesthood' [1990] in Called to Communion, p.

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THE FURROW

106 note 2). Of greater moment, because emanating from German

sources associated with Kittel's dictionary, are similar critical
views increasingly expressed by study committees of the German
Evangelical Churches as well as within international ecumenical
colloquiums on the diaconate like the Hannover Report (1996).
The final and most significant development, however, has been
the publication of a further extensive linguistic and exegetical
study of the diakon- words. This is in the recent volume by the
German scholar Anni Hentschel, Diakonia im Neuen Testament
(2007), a work marking the second wave of the second phase of
re-interpreting diakonia and ultimately the diaconate. Dr
Hentschel eliminates from Greek semantics associated with dea
con words any notion of helping others or of being lowly and
humble. She has come to this conclusion, like me, on the basis of
an examination of how the diakon- words operated in non
Christian writings as well as on how the words communicate
meaning in the varied texts of the New Testament. Both studies
are extensive, and for its pre-digital time mine was exhaustive.
Theology can only work authentically within a sustainable lin
guistic usage. This applies with particular pertinence and indeed
urgency to early Christian usage in regard to the various modes of
ministry. As a notorious treasurer of my country was accustomed
to say, 'The numbers are in.' He often added with a wry grin, 'And
they are looking good.'
So with semantic analysis. If the title 'deacon' does not derive
from Greek words meaning 'helping others in response to what
Jesus taught and exemplified', then we need a different package
for deacons of the future.

Lives touched and moulded. But it's important to see also that
the experience we mean here, religious experience, is essentially
not our experience of God, but rather God's experience of us. This
occurs throughout our lives, as God tries and tests or 'experiences'
us. Some of that experience, as we know, can come in the form of
great suffering, which can certainly be profoundly distressing,
even agonising, but the underlying, religious consolation of all
such trials is that, to the eyes of faith, they are a sign that our lives
are being touched and moulded by the grace of a merciful God,
they are not just floating aimlessly and meaninglessly through
time and space.

- martin henry, Tangents (Veritas, Dublin) p. 46

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